


Down From the Mountain

by Zoya1416



Category: Discworld - Terry Pratchett
Genre: Alchemy, Coming Out, Gen, Leaving Home, Transformation, new career
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-04
Updated: 2015-10-04
Packaged: 2018-04-24 16:47:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 300
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4927384
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zoya1416/pseuds/Zoya1416
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cheery Littlebottom hated mining, and finally left it. Origin story, triple drabble.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Down From the Mountain

**Author's Note:**

> So apparently I can write something positive. I admire Cheery very much, and wondered about her first occupation in Ankh-Morpork.

She left the mountains because she could not stand mining one more day. She could not stand talking about gold, or silver, or beams, or cave-ins, could not stand one more day of propping beams. Even if you were the ah-hem, “daughter” of a king (dwarf “chief engineer”) you still cut down trees, sawed logs, and hewed boards.

Cut those boards to proper lengths, then descended underground to create a new tunnel. She hated it. Once she had found a especially nice chunk of diamond, and polished it. For its properties of hardness and reflecting light, not its value. She kept iron and copper samples, too.

She'd made lists of the kinds of elements she knew—earth, yes, lots, but it was different colors. Air—they breathed air, but sometimes it exploded, or choked you. Water—to drink of course, but also to dissolve, and create lovely dyes from red and purple berries. Fire—this one excited her most of all, because you could use it to transform. With fire—you could make water boil, dry red and blue clays into powders for drawing, and even cook some yellow clumps of coal into eye-watering acid. That wasn't good for anything, and she was told off (dwarf for “beaten”).

She knew her parents were happy that she was moving to Ankh-Morpork, though they asked her to stay. 

“Write,” they said, and “I will,” she promised, crossing her fingers on how often.

“I'll tell you how I get on with the Alchemists.”

“Yes, and if you happen to meet the right dwarf who wants to mine—we'd stake you.”

She hid her shudder, and, hoisted the backpack with her metal samples, an extra ax, and the secret, scandalous copper boots with 1/8 inch heels.

“Cheri,” she thought. “I could be Cheri.”


End file.
